New Ectaco e-book reader shown at Frankfurt – uses AA batteries and will retail for $149 – B&N connection
Editor’s Note: This is from Johannes Haupt. I really like the idea of AA batteries. I hate carrying chargers; and what good do they do you if you are in the Bolivia and you lose the unit, as happened to me?. After that I try to use only stuff that contains plain old batteries. You will have no trouble getting an AA battery in La Paz or Port au Prince! If you play the video you’ll hear them mention that they have a deal done with Barnes & Noble. Parts of the video are in English. – Paul Biba
Hey:
Ectaco announced a quite extra-ordinary eBook Reader at current Frankfurt Book Fair. Like the Ectaco jetBook ($179 at newegg.com), Ectaco jetBook Lite has a transflective monochrome TFT-Display (5″).
The Device has an unusual form factor caused by the power supply which comes of 4 regular AA-Batteries (good for 23 hr reading). Ectaco guys at the booth told me it’s 7.5 Oz though it felt a bit heavier.
jetBook Lite will be available “very soon” in the US. Sales price is $149 which makes it the cheapest dedicated eReader in the market.
You can find pictures and a HD hands-on Video (feel free to embed it) here.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
It is nice to see ereaders getting more affordable. From the pictures, I don’t see what is so “unusual” about the form factor. Other than probably being thicker to hold AA cells, it looks just like the regular jetBook that I have.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
There’s nothing wrong with being able to use standard batteries, though I hope it can still be plugged in to recharge them. After all, we don’t want to unnecessarily add batteries to the landfills, do we?